Dr. Achilles Katamba is a senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine, College of Health Sciences at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda and also a member of the Institute Technical Board (ITB) of Makerere University Lung Institute. He is a Clinical Epidemiologist with over fifteen years of experience in the design, conduct and implementation of health services research in both hospital and community based settings in Uganda. He formally trained in Medicine and in Epidemiology and Biostatistics with concentration in Health Services Research at Case Western Reserve University under the Fogarty AIDS International Research and Training Program and Clinical Operational and Health Services Training programs. One of the most significant papers generated from his work is addressing TB diagnosis and treatment in Uganda which examined the efficiency of using a third serial sputum examination to identify additional TB cases. The findings demonstrated that the third sputum smear was inefficient in the diagnosis of further TB cases. The study was debated by the Strategic Technical Advisory Group of the WHO, and as a result changed the international policy from examining three to two sputum smears before excluding smear-positive pulmonary TB. He also currently oversees graduate dissertations in the Department of Medicine and teaches graduate students in didactic lectures in Health Services Research, epidemiology, and cost-effectiveness analysis.

He has supervised the research of graduate students both in Uganda and abroad and is actively involved in supervision and mentorship of students enrolled for Applied Clinical Research and Evidence Based Medicine (ACREM), a course that aims to produce a cadre of well-trained clinical researchers with the necessary skills to become independent clinically oriented investigators.

He is also responsible for providing administrative support critical to the implementation of the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center grant supporting the Pulmonary Complications of AIDS Research Training (PART) Program (www.part-uganda.org) which seeks to mentor Ugandan physicians, scientists, and other investigators to improve research skills in translational research in this area at Makerere University.